On The Trail Of Poachers

[an error occurred while processing this directive]

No wonder ginseng and other popular herbs are being stolen from
our national parks

The lush coves and dark hollows of the southern Appalachians have
served as an herbal pharmacy for hundreds, if not thousands, of
years. Many of the herbal remedies used today were handed down from
the region's Cherokee Indians, who used ginseng for dysentery and
headaches, goldenseal for ulcers and arrow wounds, and black cohosh
for snakebite and menstrual pain, to name just a few ailments.

[an error occurred while processing this directive]

A chance of discovery in the early 1700's led to the China connection,
when the two Jesuit priests - one in Canada and one in China - realize
dthat American ginseng was closely related to the much-sought-after
Asian ginseng, a plant the Chinese had already dug to near extinction.
The first boatload of North American ginseng roots to reach China
brought an astounding $5 a pound. A steady trade ensued. In 1773
once ship out of Boston sold 55 tons of roots in China for $330,000.
John Jacob Astor traded not just furs but ginseng, too. Even Danial
Boone, the legendary frontiersman, dug the root. In 1878 he lost
a small fortune when a boat carrying 15 tons of his genseng capsized
in the Ohio River. By the mid-1800's wilde ginseng was such a staple
that agriculture records for it were kept along with those for corn,
hogs, and tobacco.

Most ginseng products sold in the United States today are made
from cultivated ginseng and are ecologially benign to consume. American
farmers grew nearly 2.4 million pounds in 1997; more than 2 million
pounds were grown in Wisconsin alone. The cultivated roots look
more like pale white carrots than their gnarled wild counterparts.
This uniformity drops the price growers get to about $15 per poound,
although the plant's active ingredients are nearly identical to
those in the wild variety. Wild roots are dug in 20 states, but
those taken from the mountains of Kentucky, West Virginia, and North
Carolina are the most highly prized because of their age, gnarled
appearance, and alleged potency.

Digging regulations vary slightly from state to state, but most
allow digging only in the fall, after ginseng seeds have dropped.
In North Carolina, the state with the toughest laws, digging is
allowed on private land from September 1 to April 1 with the landowner's
permission and in national forests with the proper permit. Fines
for digging out of season range from $100 to $1,000, though poaching
is common and convictions are rare. In the past two years some 40
diggers and 5 dealers in North Carolina have been convicted of ginseng
violations. Most of those were fined less than $200, but in 1997
a repeat offender received a six-month jail term and was banned
from Great Smoky Moutains National Park for life.

Few places have been harder hit by herb poachers than this park,
a densely forested mountain wonderland covering more than 800 square
miles of prime herb habitat on the Tenessee - North Carolina border.
Nearly 1,600 vascular plant species grow there, and removing any
is strictly forbidden. Even so, poachers have picked the park nearly
clean of ginseng. It's one of those things that's not going to stop
until it's all gone. Most people don't understand the problem here,
and ginseng roots don't write their congressman.

Some poachers are locals, others from as far away as Florida. But
the park's rangers try to stay ahead of them. Recently they've begun
using a high-tech marking system on the park's remining ginseng.
Rangers have confiscated more than 10,000 ginseng roots from diggers
and dealers since 1992, most of which they've replanted in the park.
Some are just a year old, barely an inch long and thinner than a
pencil. The age of the scrawny plants especially worries the park's
rangers, because ginseng doesn't produce mature seeds until its
seventh or eighth year. In the wild, ginseng lives 8 to 10 years
before being dug; the roots can grow up to six inches long and get
as fat as the handle of a baseball bat. The intricate shapes command
mystical reverence in certain ginseng circles. The American public
needs to know that rhinos aren't the only thing being poached. There
are plants out there that are extremly rare. If you can't protect
what's in the park, how are you going to protect what's outside
the park?

That question has long vexed Gary Kauffman, a botanist for the
nearby Nantahala National Forest, where it is legal, with a permit,
to dig ginseng. Although, pound for pound, medical plants can be
more valuable than timber, they've been virtually ignored by national
forest managers. Diggers need only a $30 permit to collect a pound
of ginseng in the 550,000-acre national forest, and no one keeps
track of how much gets collected. Some diggers don't even bother
to buy permits. "We've not done a very good job of tracking the
harvest," Kauffman admits. "We might be catching 50 percent of what's
being dug, but it's hard to tell."

Ginseng isn't the only native medicinal plant that's being snapped
up today. Americans spent roughly $4 billion on herbal supplements
in 1998, an 11 percent increase from the previous year. Once the
domain of health food stores and New Age herbalists, the natural-remedy
craze has prompted mainstream drug and vitamin giants like Bayer,
WarnerLanbert, and American Home Products to leap into the lucrative
field. Unlike pharmaceutical drugs, which must meet strict Food
and Drug Administration standards for safety and efficacy, or even
processed foods, which have to meet standards of purity, herbal
remedies get virtually no federal oversight. There are no guarantees
that the ginseng tablets you buy have any ginseng at all in them,
much less have any healthful effect. What's more, the jury is still
out on whether ginseng is God's gift to humanity or the greatest
snake oil ever invented.

What seems certain is that the huge market for herbal remedies
such as goldenseal and echinacea is taking its toll on some of the
country's rarest and most valuable plant species. Tim Blakley, a
22-year veteran of the herb trade and now manager of the National
Center for the Preservation of Medicinal Herbs, in Meigs County,
Ohio, estimates that about 20 wild species are particularly at risk.

Blakley's fears have echoes throughout the close-knit community
of herbalists and natural healers, who have noticed many of their
favorite plants vanishing from the woods. "We are trying to get
the industry to realize that long-term growth is not going to happen
if it continues to get materials from the wild," says Liebmann of
United Plant Savers, whose group has identified 20 medical herbs
it considers "at risk," and has placed 24 others on its "to watch"
list. Liebmann estimates that development, agriculture, and poor
logging practices contribute to the destruction of 2,000 acres of
herb habitat each day.

For most ginseng growers, the biggest threat is insects or disease.
But in rural Appalchia, it's theft. In 1996, when wild ginseng prices
hit $500 a pound, a new wave of diggers took to the woods, making
quick work of the most accessible patches. Not surprisingly, most
ginseng growers in this region are as media-shy as moonshiners.
"People are as bad as bank robbers when it comes to 'sang," says
Tony Elkins, a veteran ginseng digger from Franklin. Elkins no longer
sells ginseng, but he replants any roots he finds near his home.
His hounds keep a close watch on his ginseng patch, unleashing ferocious
barks when anyone comes near. His neighbor Toby Mason is also protective
of his ginseng. Both men view their patches as tantamount to herbal
IRA's, hedges against the pell-mell poaching.

"One day when it's all gone, I reckon I'll have something," says
the soft-spoken Mason, who says he digs 300 to 400 plants a year.
"I go on Forest Service land sometimes, but you won't find much.
Anywhere people can get to regularly, they will get it."